The present invention relates to providing presence information, and in particular to customizing presence information delivery to provide multiple views of presence.
Presence detection is a technology used to convey information about the availability of individuals. Individuals are often interested in the availability of others and, because they are often not co-located, they require mechanisms for conveying availability or status information. The devices that people interact with know bits and pieces about how available they are for communications or other forms of interaction with others at any instant. People who are on the phone are less available to most others for the duration of the call, but may want to be interrupted by selected callers.
The location of a person on a mobile phone is information that may be relevant for determining whether that person is available for a certain type of event. For example, someone traveling far away from home may not be available for physical interaction with their neighbors, but may be available to take a call. Similarly, someone near a particular restaurant at lunchtime is a potential consumer.
Presence related information is routinely generated in many devices connected to various networks. For example, a person using a Personal Computer (PC) attached to a network may generate various presence state information. An xe2x80x9cOn-linexe2x80x9d state indicates a user has logged onto a network, such as the Internet or a corporate intranet, while an xe2x80x9cOff-linexe2x80x9d state indicates no connection is currently active between the user and the presence engine. xe2x80x9cIdlexe2x80x9d status implies the user""s system, although logged on, has not been active recently. Similarly, a person who acknowledges a calendar event in a PC or personal digital assistant (PDA) essentially signals their limited availability to most others for some duration while at the same time indicates that the person is active on that device. This level of presence indication is useful, but it is sufficiently coarse to limit its utility.
Most presence systems rely on users to select presence indications through a menu on a PC or PDA or a button on a specific device. Keeping any presence indicator accurate to the actual availability status of the user potentially requires very frequent interaction by the user to supply status information. Such tedious human interaction potentially negates the effectiveness of presence-based communications systems. Some systems sense user interaction with a single device like a PC, which lessens the direct human input while decreasing overall accuracy, since using a mouse or keyboard certainly indicates the presence of the user at the device. However, it simultaneously indicates they are engaged in an activity with the device, the importance of which is unknown. The result is a convoluted view of availability. The user is certainly present to some degree, but may be busy and may not want to be disturbed. In these kinds of systems, the user still has to provide manual input to prevent being inappropriately represented and interrupted.
The reliability and usefulness of presence information depends on the type of information provided and the device from which the information is gathered. A person actively interacting with a computer indicates to some degree that she is available, but probably only to those on the same network. A PC or other network device inside a corporate network will have visibility, independently or through a corporate presence server, to many presence inputs related to many PCs or other devices on that network. Typically, however, a device inside a corporate firewall will be isolated from having access to presence data related to devices like mobile phones, that by their very nature interconnect through commercial service provider networks.
Even when reliable and useful presence information for a user is available, the basic concept of availability for communications is inherently dependent on who is wanting to communicate with the user. Likewise, the specifics of activities that the user is engaged in at any instant bear on the desirability to be contacted by various individuals. For example, when the user is on a conference call at work they may wish to be unavailable to their coworkers but available to their family members for urgent communications. Further, the user may wish to be accessible by select clients regardless of time, day, and location, wherein accessibility for other clients may be limited to normal working hours when the user is in the office.
Accordingly, there is a need for improving both the number and quality of inputs into a presence management system in order to more efficiently and effectively deliver presence information to users of the information. Further, there is a need for a presence management system capable of providing different views of availability for different audiences at any given time.
The present invention provides a presence system capable of monitoring state information derived from a plurality of sources over any number of disparate networks. The state information bears on the presence or availability of the user and may take many forms. Based on a profile provided by the user, the presence system evaluates the state information from one or more sources to create presence information to deliver to subscribers. The profile can define different categories of subscribers for which different presence information is provided. Based on available state information, the presence system can provide different views of presence for different subscribers to allow the user to control delivery and use of presence information. Accordingly, different subscribers may receive different presence information based on the same state information. Preferably, the presence information bears on the availability of the user and how to communicate with the user based on her availability.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate the scope of the present invention and realize additional aspects thereof after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments in association with the accompanying drawing figures.